Bill Johnson

Schools face financial hurdles to building tornado safe rooms

By David A. LiebThe Associated Press

Posted:
05/23/2013 12:01:00 AM MDT

Updated:
05/23/2013 07:04:07 AM MDT

A 2-week-old storm shelter that saved nine people is surrounded by destroyed homes Wednesday in Moore, Okla. Rescue workers with sniffer dogs picked through the ruins Wednesday to ensure no survivors remained buried two days after a deadly tornado left thousands homeless. Many people returned to their neighborhoods Wednesday to find what belongings they could. (Rick Wilking, Reuters)

MOORE, Okla. — With its single-story design and cinder-block walls, Plaza Towers Elementary School might have seemed sturdy when it was built a couple of generations ago. But a powerful tornado revealed the building's lack of modern safety standards, destroying the school and killing seven students. Unlike several other schools in the Oklahoma City area, Plaza Towers had no "safe room" in which students and teachers could seek protection from a twister.

The federal government offers money to schools in some states if they decide to install the reinforced rooms. But doing so can still be a daunting financial decision, requiring up to a $1 million for a single storm shelter that might never be needed. That dollars-and-cents reality has resulted in a patchwork of protection in tornado-prone areas — sometimes with tragic results.

Photos: Tornado hits Oklahoma City

In response to the tornado that plowed through Moore, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin announced Wednesday the creation of a state fund to accept donations for the construction of safe rooms, which are fortified by deep foundations, thick concrete walls and steel doors designed to withstand winds of 250 mph.

Separately, a member of the state House of Representatives proposed creating a $500 million bond issue to pay for storm shelters at public schools and in private homes across the state.

"From the public, it's been a huge outcry," said state Rep. Joe Dorman, a Democrat from rural Rush Springs, about 60 miles southwest of Oklahoma City. "We need to do something to require storm shelters in schools, especially in the vulnerable areas where there have been tornado outbreaks."

Advertisement

Oklahoma, which has averaged more than 50 tornadoes per year since record-keeping began in 1950, is in the heart of tornado alley. State officials asserted Wednesday that they had done more than their counterparts in any other state to encourage construction of community safe rooms and home storm shelters.

More than 100 Oklahoma schools have already received federal grant money for safe rooms, said the head of the state's emergency management agency.

Yet most schools still lack them. The reason: the cost, which can range from a few hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million, depending on the size of the room. For some cash-strapped districts, that could equal the annual salary of nearly an entire school's teaching staff.

Federal Emergency Management Agency grants distributed by states can cover 75 percent of the cost of safe rooms, but local schools still must come up with the rest. Some school districts have issued bonds, backed by tax revenues, to ease the burden. Even that has limits.

The Choctaw-Nicoma Park School District, which teaches about 5,500 children northeast of Moore, recently used bond money to build safe rooms at five of its nine school buildings. Two additional schools are close enough to the improved buildings that students could run to the storm shelter with just a few minutes of warning. But two elementary schools are without modern safe rooms, said Superintendent Jim McCharen.

"Certainly, when we are able to get some type of assistance or do another school bond issue, both of those schools are slated to get additional classrooms" that can double as safe rooms, McCharen said.

In other places, school districts have built gymnasiums or music rooms that can serve as safe rooms during a storm.

A massive tornado destroyed six schools and badly damaged four others on May 22, 2011, in Joplin, Mo., though none of the buildings was occupied because it was a Sunday.

As Joplin began to rebuild, officials decided to put tornado shelters in all 13 of their schools, including those that were not destroyed. All of the shelters will double as gymnasiums.